E-Dividends Finally Now Working

I have been registering for the electronic dividends (e-dividends) mandate since 2012 for the shares of the companies I am invested in, and somehow it has never worked. They keep mailing me the physical dividends cheque rather than automatically credit my account. And it is worrying because they use NIPOST to post the dividend cheques and I don't trust NIPOST very much ever since they didn't deliver some clothes and belt and cuff-links I bought online and shipped through them in 2013. Also, they don't put much work into getting the parcel to the addressed owner. It's always my neighbours, sometimes three houses away, who receive the parcel and then notify me. I worry that there would have been cases where the receiver didn't even know me and down the drain goes my dividend.

Anyway, this past week I got a credit alert from GTBank. It was a NEFT transfer payment from Zenith bank for the sum of N3,600. I was confused. Who paid me N3,600? Is this another type of scam? But the alert looked genuine and I later got the email version. Then I read the description slowly and suspected it must be the recently issued 25 kobo per share dividend from Zenith bank. But the amount looks too small for owning 16,000 units of the shares. So I took out my calculator and did 0.25 x 16,000. It equaled N4,000. I then deducted 10% withholding tax, N400, and it came to exactly N3,600. I was very pleasantly surprised. So this is how the e-dividend was meant to work. Instant payment. The dividend was just declared this month. And I am used to getting dividend cheques four months after the declaration. Last month, I got Dangote Cement dividend of about N15,000 and the declaration was many months ago.

I hope the e-dividend mandates I filled for all my shares two months ago, which undoubtedly led to the Zenith bank dividends direct account payment, works for all my other shares. Especially Total, since the price has been heavily depressed for no identifiable reason and they usually give good dividends. 

It is a good thing as I often tell myself to forget about the dividends portion of my stocks return as I can't reliably expect to receive the posted dividend cheques.